The idea of time-travel—either backwards or into the future—has long intrigued scientists and science-fiction writers. Not satisfied with the world that has been created, the human imagination can dream up all sorts of scenarios which carry us back to the past in hopes of understanding or correcting the future; or propelling us into the future so that we can see how the decisions we make today can have good or dire consequences.

In the film Planet of the Apes, for example, the crew of a space ship was accidentally propelled ahead in time and after making an emergency landing on a planet, discovered they were back on Earth. But to their horror, at the end of the film, they found out that the human race had apparently been wiped out by a worldwide nuclear war, leaving only a species of intelligent apes to continue to evolve. The message was that our decisions and actions do sometimes have unthinkable consequences.

Many authors have written on the theme of time. H.G.Wells wrote The Time Machine; George Orwell projected a dismal future in 1984; and Mark Twain wrote an earlier classic, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Hundreds of films and television shows still entertain audiences around the theme of time-travel.

The scientific community is also intrigued with the concept of time and space. Many theories have been presented to try to explain how it might be possible to actually travel back in time. But there is as yet no empirical or experimental evidence that suggests that time-travel is even possible.Stephen Hawking, the British scientist, once suggested that the absence of tourists from the future makes a strong argument against the existence of time-travel; no time machine has been built yet, so the tourist from the future can’t reach this far back in time.

Hopefully, future generations of scientists will be a little less enmeshed in a strictly material approach than they are today. As long as human beings, and scientists in particular, are locked in to this three-dimensional material world they will continue to struggle with their theories and mathematical formulas in their challenge to understand and explain the true nature of the universe. And for that depth of understanding one needs to look beyond the three dimensions.

The ageless wisdom offers an alternative view.Another word for time might be evolution.All species on this planet—mineral, vegetable, animal and human—are constantly evolving and changing.The consciousness at all levels, in all kingdoms, is slowly unfolding, giving the impression in our human brain consciousness that time is linear, spanning billions of years.But evolution is a universal Law.As this spiritual Law affects the world of matter, it moves in great cycles of inbreathing and outbreathing, not in minutes, day, years, etc. Cycle after cycle it stimulates the inner consciousness of each kingdom to awaken and reveal the inner soul working through all forms.

The ageless wisdom provides much insight into the factor of time. Alice Bailey said “It must be remembered however that—except in dense physical incarnation and, therefore, conditioned by the brain and its special limitations—the spiritual man is not conscious of time, once He is separated from the physical body. Time is the sequential registration by the brain of states of awareness and of progressive contacts with phenomena. There is no such thing as time on the inner planes, as humanity understands it. There are only cycles of activity or of non-activity.”

This suggests, then, that we won’t really understand time until we acquire the ability to transcend time altogether, to see it from the perspective of the soul on the inner planes of Life. There, past, present and future are rolled into one, as part of the great Plan of God to be worked out on earth. Thinking in fourth and fifth dimensional terms, where time as we know it does not exist, is difficult to imagine. But this kind of reflective thought lies behind the ancient truth: “All that is, is ever present”. All that is lies in the mind of God, waiting for the right cycle to manifest.

Perhaps scientists and writers shouldn’t be so concerned about devising a machine to take us backward or forward in time—like a space ship being propelled at the speed of light. It would be simpler to just sit quietly in a chair and use the mind to transcend this world of three-dimensional time through a technique of meditation. Our physical body with its lower, analytical mind, cannot go (even in a space ship) into this timeless realm because they belong to the world of matter. The consciousness of the higher, abstract mind, however, has no such limitation; it can and does exist in both worlds. The higher mind can vibrate at the speed of light, because it is light. The mind of the soul does not need to work through a brain. But when it does, while in physical incarnation, it tries to imagine all kinds of back-to-the-future schemes to escape from the agony of its imposed limitations. This point of irritation with the material world is good because it indicates a restlessness which will eventually enable the mind to find the way to cross the bridge into the freedom of the inner world where time is naught. Once one has crossed that bridge and seen the illusion of time he might want to rethink the whole theory of time itself. He might also want to rethink the theory of the Big Bang and his concept of the creation of the universe. But that’s another story.